Month: July 2016

Attempts to make the capital more amenable for cycling have been underway for more than three decades

New, high-profile events like Ride London and the intense debates about street infrastructure of recent years could leave an impression that efforts to make the capital more of a cycling city didn’t really begin until Boris Johnson became mayor. But the promotional film above, held in the City of London’s London Metropolitan Archives, shows that London-wide government was pursuing the same goal more than 30 years ago.

The 24-minute film, which, judging by the statistics shown, must have been made after 1982 but before the abolition of the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1986, is striking for the familiarity of cyclists’ concerns, the reasons for people turning to cycling and the sorts of solutions produced by the road engineers of the time. Didn’t spot any helmets, though. Or lycra.

If the Russians were behind the attack on the Democrat convention – and the evidence suggests they were – this represents a major shift in Putin’s military doctrine

Last month, it was discovered that the computer networks of the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) had been penetrated by two sets of intruders, who appear to have been unaware of one another’s activities. The hackers seem to have been able to do whatever they liked, including accessing the DNC’s email servers. As a result, some (perhaps most) DNC emails found their way into the public domain via a number of routes, including WikiLeaks.

It’s been dubbed Watergate 2.0. And as in 1972, the key questions are: who were the burglars? What were their motives?

During a series of tweets earlier today (July 30), the rapper called for some kind of meeting involving him, Tidal’s primary owner Jay Z, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook and Apple Music associates Drake and Jimmy Iovine, among others. “Fuck all this dick swinging contest. We all gon be dead in 100 Years.

During a series of tweets earlier today (July 30), the rapper called for some kind of meeting involving him, Tidal’s primary owner Jay Z, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook and Apple Music associates Drake and Jimmy Iovine, among others. “Fuck all this dick swinging contest. We all gon be dead in 100 Years.

BIRTHH is 19 year-old Alice Bisi from Florence, Italy. Lead single ‘Queen of Failureland’ is about a young woman who finds no peace inside her mind: a cacophony of emotions, anxieties swirling above these layered, atmospheric, moving soundscapes. Evocative, bold and insightful, this is the sound of BIRTHH and its mesmerising. We have the video premiere for ‘Queen of Failureland’ below, with the album ‘Born in the Woods’ to follow this October.

“A stormy adolescence re-shaped her song-writing and she began to experiment and search for something altogether more dynamic. Writing incessantly and working with harmonisers and Logic Pro 9, BIRTHH began to take shape and eventually grew into Alice’s darker alter-ego: the conscience of a nineteen-year-old who spends most of her time thinking about apocalyptic events.

The sound of this torment shows great attention to detail and a taste for downtempo-ambient atmospheres. “I wanted the Wurlitzer and most of the guitars to have some kind of lo-fi imprint in order to contrast the sharp and neat sounds of the beats and of the arpeggiatos; the organ and the harmonium have been inserted with pretty much the same purpose. We wanted to add percussion sounds taken from everyday life (snap, claps, water, doors slamming, etc.) and to integrate them into fragmented rhythms that could disorientate the listener. In most of the tracks we did not even use the bass: I liked the idea of being able to make an electronic music record without the aid of this central element: to get that depth we opted for kick-beats with a very low frequency.”

The album was recorded at the end of 2015 in Brescia (Italy), at Red Carpet Studio, by Lorenzo Caperchi and Alessandro Paderno.